Map size - then and now

[SchwarzKatze]

Here are my suggestions:

1. Make areas in the pink/purple boxes terra incognita which would reveal to nations bordering them, having territory nearby for sometime or by event

2. Green boxes: You can see info about who's the dominant power, their wealth(if a option like sending troops to raid them is present, or affect their troop quality), MP(how many troop they would spawn), relation with you, bordering country and other powers(those who dominate the nearby zones, you can have them fighting each other or attack your enemy), aggresiveness(likelyhood of them attacking you)

3. Black boxes: An advanced version of green boxes, as the zone is bigger, you may see "This zone is filled with patchworks of small countries", "Some medium sized countries carved up this zone, they are: NAME1, NAME2, NAME3, ....", "This zone is united under the rule of NAME" or "This zone is under the foreign occupation of NAME". Sometimes a powerful country in one of these zones may try to conquer its neighbors and sometimes one would collapse into smaller states for various reasons, and if the condition is flavorable for a certain nomad tribe, maybe you would see the Kara-Khitans, Jurchens or Uighurs marching into Kiev. Some flavor events could be added like Marco Polo(or random name according to in which country this event fired) brings great wealth/knowledge back to COUNTRYNAME!

 

[Antoine]

I honestly don't understand people who want to make the map smaller. I mean, what possible benefit is that to us?

Making the game playable instead of each day taking a minute to process once the AI/revolts/you created counties everywhere and all their courtiers have to be simulated ?

Now I agree that keeping the same number of provinces as ck1 is a reasonable minimum. Just avoid to double it if all provinces may have their own court with armies of npc inside.

 

[unmerged(59077)]

Making the game playable instead of each day taking a minute to process once the AI/revolts/you created counties everywhere and all their courtiers have to be simulated ?

CK was eminently playable on a laptop so old I've sent it to greener pastures by 2008. I have no idea what you're thinking is going to cause it to become unplayable. And CK had a lot of garbage data and useless characters too, something they will hopefully fix.

 

[Garak]

Making the game playable instead of each day taking a minute to process once the AI/revolts/you created counties everywhere and all their courtiers have to be simulated ?

Now I agree that keeping the same number of provinces as ck1 is a reasonable minimum. Just avoid to double it if all provinces may have their own court with armies of npc inside.

I don't quite understand. You quoted me talking about my confusion over people wanting smaller maps to argue with me... then agreed that that the CK1 map is a "reasonable minimum". That's pretty much what I said. Almost no one has asaid anything about doubling the number of provinces.

 

[Caranorn]

I don't quite understand. You quoted me talking about my confusion over people wanting smaller maps to argue with me... then agreed that that the CK1 map is a "reasonable minimum". That's pretty much what I said. Almost no one has asaid anything about doubling the number of provinces.

Well, some at least (me included) have said that the number of provinces in Europe has to be raised (for various reasons) and that some performance issues could be tackled by removing certain (to us) unnecessary regions or by abstracting those regions...

In my opinion only the developers and testers can say what size map and therefore what ammount of potentially separate counties the game can handle...

 

[Antoine]

I don't quite understand. You quoted me talking about my confusion over people wanting smaller maps to argue with me... then agreed that that the CK1 map is a "reasonable minimum". That's pretty much what I said. Almost no one has asaid anything about doubling the number of provinces.

You were asking why people may think needed to reduce the map size. I just answered (although personnally I'm not for a reduced map size but rather for a map of about the same size + a well thought abstracted system -not random spawns of armies by event- to simulate areas bordering it).

I think performance is an important factor here. Especially considering the intent to give courtiers more life with ambitions etc... and the expected more in depth diplomatic system, that may mean more ressources have to be used for each court and each character in each court.

Also remember that an important feature of early ck1, being able to marry any courtier, had to be cut in v1.02 to avoid an unplayable endgame and gigas sized saved games. While actual ck1 don't have big performance issues it wasn't really the case of the game as it was released.

 

[elvain]

@elvain : If this was an arguement for detailed simulation of everything up to India, it seems China, Japan and Tibet would need to be simulated the same, as mongols may just never have came so far if they were defeated in the east, annexed by Tibet or too busy invading Japan.

I think about everything happening out of the map judged plausible enough to be simulated, that may have an importance for the detailed play area (= the map) can be abstracted anyway, without having to slow the game calculating the ambitions of Muhammad the afghan courtier of the pasha of Kandawar, the unhappiness of peasants in each province of eastern Persia, or the infidelities of the third wife of the mongol governor of Samarkhand.

let me sum up some fact of some main nomadic raids from the East.
Seljuks - originated: Central Asia, expansion: Persia -> Mesopotamia ->Anatolia
Mongols: origin: Mongolia, expansion: Central Asia -> Persia -> Mesopotamia
/ and Central Asia -> "Khazaria" -> Russia -> Central Europe
Timurids: Origin: Central Asia exnpansion: -> Persia etc.

see? Central Asia is the main base for further expansion to any of CK related regions. Where's Tibet? Where's India, where's China?
How many Tibetan, Indian or Chinese originated empires had overlap to Persia and Mesopotamia? Ghaznavid, Ghurid and other empires expanded to India, but their later influence on Persia was minimal. The interaction between Persia and Central Asia (both sides) was much stronger: both cultural/religious and political.

Everything can be simulated. The point is that some parts are more tied to CK main regions of interest, some less. That means Persia MUST be in if you want at least little realistic Levant/crusading area and you can't do this through some meta region - the interaction was too dynamic and doubble-sided. I don't think Central Asia is such a must for the Levant, I just think that some 15 provinces of Transoxania won't overweight the game too much.
Maybe a meta province could do better, but it had some reason why PI included at least part of it into the map, so why should the same region be now a meta province?

 

[Nick B II]

You were asking why people may think needed to reduce the map size. I just answered (although personnally I'm not for a reduced map size but rather for a map of about the same size + a well thought abstracted system -not random spawns of armies by event- to simulate areas bordering it).

I think performance is an important factor here. Especially considering the intent to give courtiers more life with ambitions etc... and the expected more in depth diplomatic system, that may mean more ressources have to be used for each court and each character in each court.

Also remember that an important feature of early ck1, being able to marry any courtier, had to be cut in v1.02 to avoid an unplayable endgame and gigas sized saved games. While actual ck1 don't have big performance issues it wasn't really the case of the game as it was released.

I'd like to make a simple point:
CK1 was released in '04. It is 2008. That's six years. Per Moore's Law computer performance has doubled four times since then. So in theory CK could have 16 times the provinces and perform the same.

Granted that's an over-simplification, and it ignores the one area of CK where calculations increase exponentially as provinces go up (spread events), but I have yt to see any compelling evidence that a 4,000 province CK will cripple a 2010 computer.

Nick

 

[SchwarzKatze]

>>Nick B II

It cripples the engine, not the computer, Clausewitz engine doesn't do well on multicored PC

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I'd like to make a simple point:
CK1 was released in '04. It is 2008. That's six years. Per Moore's Law computer performance has doubled four times since then. So in theory CK could have 16 times the provinces and perform the same.

Granted that's an over-simplification, and it ignores the one area of CK where calculations increase exponentially as provinces go up (spread events), but I have yt to see any compelling evidence that a 4,000 province CK will cripple a 2010 computer.

Nick

Computer power has increased, but the average game developer has not become a mental superman in the mean time. Also, the amount of work hours per week and the average game budget do not follow Moore's law. Games, like any software program, must not become too complex for the developer, or you get bugged crap software that has to be released unfinished because otherwise the company goes broke.

 

[Davisx3m]

There was some flavour in the last map. Mostly on seas or in Sweden and Finland, skulls, etc. And the huge monster in the oceans, I want more stuff like that!

 

[Jia Xu]

I think in the initial release the map should extent as far east as Arabia as well as far as wherever in eastern Europe the Mongols will eventually pop up. I think Arabia is particularly necessary because this is a crusading themed game (it's right there in the title, folks). The ultimate crusader victory would be to conquer Mecca and that should be a possible goal for people who want to play crusading oriented games. If they go ahead with that Muslim themed expansion at some point, I'd like the map to be extended to include Persia to make games as an Arabian country more interesting.

 

[Sternness]

Even we don't have the map extend out to the kingdom of Prester John, I would at least like some events were my king can go out in futile search of the mysterious Christian kingdom of the orient.

 

[LordofSaxony]

I think just using the map size of CK1 would be fine for the initial release. Then, for the expansion increase the areas in the east and make Islamic nations playable. Those 2 together (increasing map size to the east + Islamic nations) just seems appropriate as a grouped entity.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I don't remember who, but someone from Paradox (Johan? King? Fred?) hinted that playable Muslims would be included in an expansion pack.

Yes, and I think this is something that is conveniently ignored by certain people who would see huge swathes of the Muslim world abstracted out of the map.

The fact is, Paradox expansions generally don't change the map in a significant way. They add provinces here and there, and Divine Wind will apparently borrow V2's paper map graphics (notice that DW is not getting a unique graphical overhaul of its own), but they never really expand the scope of the map. So I'm not sure if Paradox will include Transoxiana (and Persia, and Mesopotamia, and Sudan, and whatever else people want excised/absent) in the expansion. If we want them, they need to be there from the beginning.

Maybe those regions aren't directly relevant to the titular crusading kings--though I think other posters have made a very good case for their indirect relevance--but they will certainly be very relevant to eventually-playable Muslim rulers. Limiting the map to just the Mediterranean basin will make Muslims very boring, in addition to the problems of no strategic depth and poor simulation that other posters have outlined.

 

[Antoine]

I think no matter where the map stops the way the regions bordering the conquerable area are simulated is more important than the map itself.

I mean a problem of ck1 was the way the world ended with the conquerable map, so regions like northern Africa were ultra easy to conquer, with defenders easily surrounded, and worse even easier to keep as a christian ruler, as all african muslims political entities just disappeared when the african coast was conquered. Muslim forces couldn't find refuge in the deserts or mountains bordering the map and raid the coasts, nomads living south of the coast and able to cross the Sahara were non existant as well while they should be a constant threat for a christian owner of Morocco or Algeria, even once maghreb kingdoms are defeated, and finally revolts weren't strong enough and conversion chances small enough to avoid to have a 100% christian and christian owned north Africa by year 1300 or so in most games, even without player intervention (the only thing that could sometimes prevent that in ck1 was a permanent civil war dislocating France and conquest of southern europe by Sevilla or other muslim states, outcomes not really better for an historic game).

I don't think adding more normal conquerable provinces can help with that, the result would just be to end with christian dukes of Sahara if they are succesfull (of course with a little more efforts for christians to achieve this result), what is needed is a system to simulate large areas of desertic/savage lands non conquerable by christian states but offering strategic deep to muslims/pagans nations on their border, as they had contacts with local nomads since centuries (local nomads who should also be a permanent threat for anyone owning a province on map edge and not establishing good diplomatic contacts with them - = not paying them to avoid regular raids).